"Power transmission, NBN cabling, those sorts of things coming into the figures," he said.

"That drives up the construction component overall, but I think that if you were to break that down further and look at the building side of it I think that you'd probably find that both resident and commercial have both been in decline for most of last year."

Figures released earlier this month show the number of residential building approvals has been falling since the beginning of last year.